
Most polls show Donald Trump with a small lead over Joe Biden, but it’s another story when it comes to who will win control of the House of Representatives. The most recent four polls show voters preferring Democrats over Republicans in Congressional races by a margin that is very small, yet big enough to swing control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats.
For example, the NBC News poll shows Democrats leading Republicans by 1% — 47% to 46% — in its July 2024 poll. That’s a shift in favor of Democrats from the April and January 2024 polls conducted by NBC News, which showed Republicans leading 47% to 46% in April, and 49% to 45% in January, in terms of whom voters wanted to control Congress.
The Economist poll shows Democrats now leading by 2% (46% to 44%) after earlier being tied with Republicans.
The Emerson poll shows Democrats ahead by 2% after earlier trailing by 1%.
The NPR/PBS/Marist poll shows Democrats leading by 2% after earlier being tied with Republicans.
Republicans now need to beat the Democrats by more than 1% to win control of the House of Representatives, because Republican votes are now heavily concentrated in rural areas — creating a natural Democratic gerrymander in some states. In 2022, Republicans barely won control of the House, despite getting 2.8% more of the vote nationally than Democrats (Republicans got 50.6% of the vote, nationally, in House races, compared to only 47.8% for the Democrats). In 2022, there were states where the Democrats got fewer votes in House races than the Republicans did (because they did so badly in rural areas), but won a majority of the House races in that state (because Democrats won most of the races in suburban areas, where Democrats narrowly won close races).
So even the narrow lead for Democrats (on the generic Congressional vote shown in the last four polls) means they will likely retake control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats. There is around a 60% chance the Democrats take control of the House.
In the old days, a narrow Democratic lead like this wouldn’t give Democrats control of the House, because lots of Democrats are bunched into cities, so even if the Democrats got a big enough urban vote to get most of the vote statewide, they might still get only a minority of the vote in the suburban swing districts that determine control of Congress. Geography used to favor the Republicans. But that’s no longer true.
Now, geography favors the Democrats instead: Republicans are even more geographically concentrated in some rural areas (like southwest Virginia) than Democrats are in urban and inner-suburban areas that are progressive bastions. So Democrats can win swing districts in suburban areas even if they barely beat Republicans in the overall Congressional vote nationally.
On the other hand, if the election were held today, Republicans would probably retake control of the Senate by a narrow 51-to-49 margin, because they only need to pick up two Democratic seats to do this, and they will pick up a seat in West Virginia and possibly Montana. The Republicans have nearly a 70% chance of taking control of the Senate from the Democrats. (It is possible that the Democrats will retain control of the Senate, because the Senate race in Montana is close, and the Republican barely leads there — and because there is a small chance that the Democrats will win the Florida Senate race. If the Democrats retain control of the Presidency, the Vice President will be a Democrat, and can cast the tie-breaking vote to give control of the Senate to the Democrats, if there are 50 Democratic Senators and 50 Republican senators.).
If Democrats retain control of the Senate, they will probably abolish the filibuster to pass controversial progressive legislation that previously could not pass. That’s because the two Senators elected as Democrats who opposed abolishing the filibuster — Manchin and Sinema — are both retiring, and incoming Democratic Senators will be more left-wing than they are. All Democratic Senators (other than Manchin and Sinema) supported abolishing the filibuster.
As one commentator observed, if the filibuster is abolished, and Democrats control Congress and the presidency, Democrats could “fundamentally transform American society in a left-wing direction, doing things like packing the Supreme Court, reclassifying currently-legal speech and religious activity as illegal ‘harassment’ or ‘discrimination,’ and turning progressive territories and enclaves into states to lock in progressive control for years.”
2024 Generic Congressional Vote
NBC News | 7/7 – 7/9 | Republican 46% | Democrat 47% |
Democrats+1
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NPR/PBS/Marist | 7/9 – 7/10 | Republican 44% | Democrat 46% |
Democrats+2
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Economist/YouGov | 7/7 – 7/9 | Republican 44% | Democrat 46% |
Democrats+2
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Emerson | 7/7 – 7/8 | Republican 43% | Democrat 44% |
Democrats+1
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